Royals
by nlizzette7
Summary: "Kingdoms or country sides decades later, the ending doesn't change. The beautiful girls wilt faster, they say. Mary Stuart was doomed from the start." / Reign AU, set in present-day. / Sebastian x Mary.


**Disclaimer: **I've been a huge fan of Reign so far, and I thought it would be fun to put a different spin on it. This version of Reign is centered on Bash and Mary in the present day. Rather than kingdoms and prophecies in Scotland, there are politics and a murder mystery in a small town. Other than that, the storyline is still the same. I know that I'm taking a risk with this one - but I was in the mood to get creative!

* * *

** Prologue **

_Well, you're art, you fell into this part ._

_You play the victim perfectly holding your beating heart ._

_You used to be so smart ._

_You fluttered round the yard making your magic._

_Got to set you free . You were blinded by deceit ._

_You can't fly away electric bird._

In the end, the sky didn't hold any color, and she grabbed onto the shards of a broken story with bloody fingertips, then wondered why her fate has always been sealed in red.

Kingdoms in the sixteenth century or country sides decades later, the ending doesn't change.

The beautiful girls wilt faster, they say.

Mary Stuart was doomed from the start.

/

They were royal when they were young.

In the age of innocence, girls still dreamt of the thrones they could barely climb upon, and boys were neither bastards nor on gritty paths to being dead inside. They loved as all young children did, breathlessly and carefree, sans any obligation.

The sun was not forced to shine everyday, nor was Mary pressed to take each of their hands, Francis's smooth and calculating, while Sebastian always squeezed much too tightly, boyishly tugging her along, though she always ended up ahead.

_My queen_, his touch claimed. _My confidant._

They lived in a small town, and Mary wore crowns of daisies, torn pedals sticking to her cheeks when she pressed herself into the grass at seven years old. They conquered ice cream trucks, warred with sewage monsters and plastic swords. Under their feet, the world seemed impossibly small.

Their houses were grand, two manors standing side by side, where their town got its gleam. Mary came from rubies, Francis came from even more – and Sebastian was the boy who would never truly belong to any of it at all.

But none of that ever mattered. Not on hot afternoons, dirt stuck to her dress like a cluster of ruddy diamonds, and it was the most beautiful thing in the world.

"The most beautiful thing in the world," Sebastian marveled aloud.

Francis nodded as Mary spun around and around in their backyard, hair falling to her lower back like the princesses did in the old bound books. The boy beside Sebastian was fair-haired like their father's wife, a constant reminder that the raven-haired brother was an indiscretion, the blip in perfection, and the heir to nothing.

In the de' Medici mansion, there were million dollar heirlooms, and they all seem to be stamped with Francis's name. Sebastian, on the other hand, sat in borrowed chairs and smiled as if there were something permanent for him there.

When he looked closely enough, he could only see Mary at her window.

/

He'd only ever seen her cry once.

She was writing at her window, and Sebastian was toying with a telescope he'd gotten for his tenth birthday. He trained it on the stars, peering up through a scape of black bangs, from blue eyes brighter than it seemed natural. Since they were young, Francis had been obsessed with building things, while Sebastian loved to memorize what already was.

He trained his telescope on the girl across their lawn, and he caught her wiping something from her cheek, and then again. Frustrated, she fanned the pages of her journal, then placed it aside. There was something awfully gentle about Mary, the way she cared after every little thing. But she was wild, too. She loved to be amused, thought she could run away and rule the world if she so pleased.

And she was…she was staring back at him.

Startled, he dropped the telescope to his lap, and the expression on her face was neither pleased nor upset. Sebastian raised his eyebrows and pointed down, where there was a grove of flowers down behind their houses, right where the world stopped and the woods started.

Minutes later, they were shining flashlights on the grass, their beams crisscrossing until they formed a yellow _x_.

"Why were you crying?" Sebastian asked.

Mary's hair was hanging loose down her back, a few tendrils falling in her face as they walked. "Why were you spying on me?"

"Just watching the stars," Sebastian explained, though he was still staring at her.

Mary nodded, sat down in the grass with little care for her dress. He sat beside her, elbows on his knees, listening to the low soundtrack of the night, hums of night bugs and the slosh of the creek.

"Why are we so different?" Mary suddenly asked, shifting towards him, eyes lit in the darkness. "The other kids talk about our families, you know. They say that we own the entire town."

"You and Francis are different," Sebastian said, fiddling with the hem of his pant leg.

"You too. You're brothers."

"Half-brothers."

"_Brothers_," Mary said firmly.

"But not the kind of brother that Catherine would ever let stay here forever. You see the look she gives my mom every time she comes to visit."

"Well," Mary sighed, "_I_ think you're the best kind."

Sebastian smiled. "Do you now?"

Mary stuck out her tongue. "And the cheeky kind." She paused, remembering. "You and Francis both."

Sebastian turned his head, chin to one shoulder, so that she could not see his smile falter. Instead of responding, he said, "I'm going to leave this town one day."

Mary frowned. "But this is our home."

"Your home can be anywhere. And I think…there's a world beyond this." Sebastian thought of his telescope, how it seemed to hold infinity. "You can come with me, if you want."

Mary smiled down at this grass, traced patterns with her fingertips. "My mother is getting sick."

It wasn't an answer.

"There are people who want to buy into our company," Mary continued. "Angry people." Sebastian watched her, and when he could no longer stand it, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She closed her eyes at the contact but said nothing of it. "They're saying bad things about her. And I know that she hasn't been fit to handle things since Dad died."

"She's going to be okay," Sebastian promised.

"You don't know that."

"_You're _going to be okay," Sebastian said, watching the woods until they blended into the dark. "I know that."

/

They sent her away, and Sebastian could barely fathom it as he watched suitcases get loaded into the trunk of a cab.

Words were caught in his throat, but he was frozen where he stood.

She was going to live with cousins of the family in New York. Her mother had been bedridden when they hit their teenaged years and for some reason, unbeknownst to them all, it wasn't okay for Mary to be there anymore. There were adults reasons, things whispered about partnerships, the alliances threaded under their town, papers signed by a half-conscious woman on her death bed.

"Well, I suppose this is it," Mary announced, snapping him out of his reverie. She hugged the girls first – the best friends she'd made in high school, the ones that had somehow attached themselves onto their three-person gang. She clutched onto Kenna's hand, kissed Greer on the cheek, pulled Aylee and Lola into a hug so tight that the girls broke out in a fit of giggles.

Francis and Sebastian exchanged a smirk that didn't quite meet their eyes.

Mary went to Francis next, and Sebastian pretended not to notice. She held the blonde boy's shoulders, and they laughed about something he didn't understand. As Francis said something slick into her ear, Sebastian rolled his eyes – not missing the knowing look that Kenna shot him for a second.

Mary's hands then came to Sebastian's cheeks when he wasn't looking, her thumbs on the first signs of a five o'clock shadow, stroking at his skin. He didn't know if best friends got this intimate. But how could he tell when she was only a breath away?

"Bash…You're the governor's son, too, you know," Mary murmured so that the others could not hear. "And you are the _best _kind."

She didn't once say Francis's name.

"You're going to come back," Sebastian promised.

Mary glanced back at the house, slid her fingers away like she wasn't so sure. And then she smiled, curled her fingers around the final bag in her hands before she kissed him on the cheek. "I'd have run, too," she said to him, recalling the talk of other homes they'd had in youth. "If things were different."

She spun on her heel then, grabbed onto her driver's hand to help her into the cab as if she were royalty from sixteenth century.

The car pulled up to the curb, stalled before making a sharp turn, leaving a group of misty-eyed girls and sunken-hearted boys behind.

Francis kicked at the grass, stormed away without saying a word to Sebastian.

And just like that, everything was gone.

/

The air seemed drier as they waited.

She dreamt of blood sometimes. They both did.

Mary imagined herself dying, and Sebastian imagined he'd never been born. The nightmares came easily, and they'd wake up barely breathing, far away from where their unkempt hearts were meant to be.

His elbows would sink into his sheets, a sheen of sweat on his body. Next door, Francis would be rolling under his comforter with the girl of the week, bedding who he pleased, only to assume official duties with his father the next morning.

One night, after a particularly harsh vision, Sebastian sighed, raked his fingers through his hair, bare feet padding across the mansion floors around midnight. He stopped outside of Francis's door, listened to a hushed one-sided whisper, eyed the glow of a cell phone in the dark.

"You've been talking to her," Sebastian stated once the conversation had ended, standing by Francis's window. Down the yard, he could see the one window that had remained dark since Mary had gone.

"Bash, don't start this," Francis said. "It was just one call."

"It was just one question," Sebastian replied.

"And if I have?" Francis asked, not bothering to flick on his light. "I'm not the one who'd sneak off with her in the middle of the night." Francis paused, taking in Sebastian's startled expression, like the boy hadn't realized anyone was watching. Francis nodded, sitting back against his bedframe. "Last time I checked, you hadn't claimed any ownership on her."

"No," Sebastian agreed, "that's your thing."

The boys were quiet for a moment, silently staring. But it was Sebastian who retreated first, rolling his shoulders back, then heading for the door until he heard his half-brother make a noise.

"You say her name in your sleep," was all that Francis remarked, like that was the truth of it all.

Sebastian cleared his throat, but did not say a word.

Perhaps it was.

/

They were eighteen, sitting at the same stairwell they did when they were young, little boys now grown into sharp jaws and clever sparks in their eyes. Francis wore a black Polo and Sebastian's dress shirt was unbuttoned below his collar.

They quieted down, both listening.

"She's coming home for her mother's funeral, poor girl," Catherine said with a flourish. She served tea to Nicholas, the man who often hung around the house, the woman's personal assistant practically. He was tall and brooding, built to kill a thousand men, but hung on the governor's wife's every word as if she were God.

"Indeed," Nicholas agreed. "Quite the tragedy." He sipped his tea, pursed his lips. "Quite the…opportunity."

Catherine glanced back with a raised brow. Nicholas liked to think himself clairvoyant, and Francis's mother ate it up every time.

"Governor's serving his last term," Nicholas explained. "I assume he'll make it even further with friends in high places. Don't you think?"

"What are you saying, Nicholas?"

"I'm saying that Mary has the potential to build the Stuart name up from the ashes it burned in," Nicholas replied. "And what better to have in the family than that sort of power?"

Catherine smirked, rolled her eyes. "Are you implying _adoption_?"

"More like marriage," Nicholas affirmed in a quiet voice, "to your boy."

From his perch on the step, Francis cut a sharp glance at his half-brother.

Sebastian reached up, pressed the cord around his neck between two fingertips, where there was a crushed daisy wound around the string, petals barely intact, mostly a stem now.

He supposed that was how memories went, too.

"You're still dating Lottie?" Sebastian asked, less a question, more a reminder.

"Barely," Francis replied.

Sebastian parted his lips as if he was about to say something, then thought better of it. Instead, he picked a football up from where it had been tossed earlier, threw it at Francis.

"Up for a game?"

"Yeah," his brother said. "Sure."

/

It was summer when she returned, and they waited on her just as they'd watched her go.

_"Gentlemen," _the girls joked, giddy and overexcited on Francis and Sebastian's front porch, watching carefully for passing cars. Sebastian did a card trick for Aylee and Kenna, and blowing them away as he did every time.

Francis let go of Lottie's hand, sliding his back onto his lap, watching as a car pulled up between the two houses, and its driver strolled around side to let the passenger out.

Sebastian glanced back to find that his brother was already staring. And just like that, one awaited his future as the other rememorized his past - but it wasn't clear which was doing either.

Mary wore white flats, a sundress that held a heart-shape at her bust and billowed out down to her knees. She smiled the way daisies hesitate before blossoming in the spring.

_"The queen has arrived."_

* * *

**A/N: **So, this is a little basic introduction that I'd love to continue if you guys enjoy it! Drop a note if it floats your boat. xo, N


End file.
